Principal’s welcome

Kia ora, and welcome to the final newsletter for Term Two.

We’ve had a wonderful couple of weeks here, capped off with our Premier Basketball team’s astounding success this week in Macau, China, where the girls won Bronze at the World Schools’ Basketball Championships. Congratulations on a magnificent result.

Associate Principal Nicky Whitham-Blackwell and I were privileged to travel to Baltimore, USA, recently, where we attended the 2024 International Coalition of Girls Schools Conference. It was wonderful to hear about how different girls’ schools worldwide navigate societal change. The other member schools are working hard to grow resilient, confident, kind and globally aware girls – just like us. We loved sharing stories and strategies with our peers and came away brimming with inspiration.

During the conference, it was announced that staff member Alex van der Loos had won the coveted GARC Researcher of the Year award. We are extremely proud of her. This issue has an item about Alex’s achievement, so you can read more about it. Elyse Heslop has been selected in the next cohort of GARC researchers and spent a valuable two days prior to the conference working on her project with her colleagues from across the globe.

You may already know that in September this year, we have the honour of hosting our own ICGS conference here at Westlake, the ‘Educating Girls Symposium.’ We’re full steam ahead organising this and you’ll hear more about it soon.

For now, I’d like to wish everybody a restful and replenishing break, and I’ll look forward to seeing all the students back for Term Three, revitalised and ready to go.

Jane Stanley

PRINCIPAL